Women who seek revenge and know how to get it

Sometimes you just have one of those days. Perhaps someone cut you off on the way to work, then you catch your backstabbing co-worker saying disparaging things about you to your boss in a power play to get ahead. And when the dreadful day is just about over and you are 10 minutes away from being able to soak in the tub or sink into the couch, you step outside of your office building, and a bird flying overhead craps on your new jacket.

Suddenly, you start entertaining fantasies of recreating the scene in Fried Green Tomatoes where Kathy Bates screams “TAWANDA!” and rams her car into the car belonging to the insolent teenagers who cut her off in the parking lot.

Then you become giddy at the thought of slipping laxatives into your co-worker’s stash of Dr. Pepper. Finally, you muse that a variation of coq au vin called bluejay au vin may actually be quite tasty.

Although you may recall that tired phrase you learned in Sunday school — you know, the one about turning the other cheek — revenge can certainly be cathartic.

Yesterday, The Onion‘s AV Club published a list of films about vengeful women. You think you had one of those days? Many of the women in the films on the list have had one of those lives. No wonder some of them left a body count that rivals that of Genghis Khan’s rampage through Asia.

Here are some of the films on the list.

Kill Bill

Imagine waking up from a four-year coma after having your entire wedding party slaughtered by your former boyfriend and BFFs. Oh, and they also left you for dead. Not hot. Not hot at all, though Uma Thurman slicing through a never-ending supply of masked goons while wearing a yellow jumpsuit certainly is.

Coffy and Foxy Brown

Do you remember the scene in The L Word where Kit visits Helena in prison and gives her detailed advice on how to survive in prison? Blinking in wide-eyed amazement, Helena asks Kit how she acquired this wealth of knowledge, and Kit responds, “I’ve been places.”

This exchange was a deliberate nod to the string of women in prison films that Pam Grier starred in during the 1970s. Back then, her characters carried a gun, a shank or even poisonous snakes as weapons at all times, and they weren’t afraid to use them.

Although the AV Club only listed the two Grier films above, I’d like to expand their entry to include any film in the early 1970s she starred in. Grier was the queen of both blaxploitation films and women in prison films back in that decade.

For a trip back in time, just look at the posters. The one on the left is especially over the top — no subtlety whatsoever.

The Brave One

The Brave One is proof that no matter now superb the cast, if the script of a film is bad, the final product will leave much to be desired. But that’s OK. Just turn off the sound and watch Jodie Foster run around in dykey urban hipster clothes and a gun. That’s why you watched this film in the first place, after all.